I’m intrigued by the “Skateboard Gang” (shades of Thrashing in that title) video. I know nothing about it. It wasn’t from one of the mainstream companies, and it wasn’t something happening underground in the UK. Our lines of information came from those two sources, most of the time. Anything outside of that seemed alien to…

Going off at a tangent time: this advert for premium voice lines makes me think of a recent news story I heard about one of the biggest companies specialising in dialtones and the like. They’d just started expanding into China, I think. The thing which struck me is that the company in question is run…

Main points of interest? Loads of decks at around £42 and plenty of wheels for less than £30. The big range of protective clothing and the section devoted to plastics date it. So does the small number of shoes on offer! Videos featured in this advert were Streets on Fire, Public Domain, Animal Chin, Bones…

This was page one of a double page spread advert for Rollersnakes, who were clearly going for mail order in a big way. Complete skateboards started at £75 with RIP trucks and wheels, others were £90 or £105. Powell decks cost £5 extra. Those were different times.

Good to see an advert made specifically for the UK market, from the days before shoe adverts dominated skateboarding mags (and paid my wages for several years, to be fair). I also have fuzzy memories of the Airwalk’s hospitality at American trade shows. Does anyone know who took the picture?

Hot Wheels stuck to their guns. Like Alpine Action trying to sneak skateboard adverts into BMX Action Bike, they ran their BMX adverts in a magazine which was crammed full of skateboarding. I admire them for it. What could you get for your money? Complete bikes like a Skyway Streetscene would cost £199 and the…

Some fine shops were advertising here and some prosper to this day. Double page spreads of adverts were rare back in 1989, even at the height of that boom, but these days they’re commonplace. Funny to think of Essjay calling himself “old” in 1989. What does that make him (us) now?

1989 saw M Zone at the peak of their notoriety after the move from Croydon to Carnaby Street. The Lowndes Court shop and full-time party zone was the scene of many a celebrity’s debunking. The skater in this advert was Jason Lunn and he can also be seen wearing the Anarchic Adjustment ‘Freedom’ shirt in…

This page is interesting for the list of contributors (some classic names there), alongside a couple of classic adverts and a nice shot of Ged Wells, but it also marked a break from the usual format. We were experimenting with various different editorial and advertising configurations during this period. The flat-plan for the running order…

The skater part of me was gloomed by this film. It seemed so silly. The film studies part of me was intrigued by the fact that it was directed by Graeme Clifford, who was the editor on Nic Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and “Don’t Look Now” — but it could not have…